Knott's Berry Farm, 1960s
I have four slide scans - undated, but probably from the late 1960s or early 1970s. They are from Kodak 126 slide film, and the quality isn't that great. But hey! It's still Knott's Berry Farm.
This first one is the best, a family taking in the wonders of the Calico Mine Ride - you get a sense of how big it is in this photo, with its rocky outcropping, waterfall, and of course the brave and cheerful little trains (sadly none are in this image) that constantly passed by. I appreciate the addition of spiky desert plants.
Next is the famous Bottle House, which looks fine on the outside, but you have to go inside to really get the full effect of sunlight streaming in through bottles - clear, green, amber, brown, and the occasional blue example. It's surprisingly pretty.
The Timber Mountain Log Ride still impresses after more than 50 years, another triumph from Bud Hurlbut (and Arrow Development). What would Knott's be like if Bud hadn't been around? I don't even want to think about it. I've loved this ride since I first rode it at around the age of seven, and still do.
One of the logs splashes down, while one of the full size (but narrow-gauge) trains passes nearby. I have a friend who never warmed to KBF, and he is a great guy, but I just don't understand how anybody could go to Knott's and not enjoy it, especially back when it was being run by the Knott family.
20 comments:
I see Fudgie!... Oh wait. I DO see a strange E.T.-type creature though, just below and to the right of the main waterfall. His tongue is lolling out.
I don't see any outlandish fashions here... where's the fun in that? (I think I said something very similar about a month ago.)
That's probably the best photo of the Bottle House we've seen. Seems like we've seen a picture taken from the inside?... Maybe not.
That's a peculiar indented design on the backs of the Logs. They remind me of compartmented "TV dinner" trays. It must serve some practical purpose for the ride because I don't see any reason why the end of a log would look that way in real life.
Not sure if there is anybody on the train. I suppose they must be there, but I don't see them.
Thanks for more KBF pics, Major.
Just a note: Bottle houses used to be a thing in the old west, when empty likker bottles were more plentiful than proper building materials.
Carl Barks incorporated a bottle house into an Uncle Scrooge story set in a semi-abandoned mining town. And the line for Radiator Springs Racers over at Disney includes a bottle house. Made from oil bottles, of course.
Bud hurled his butt straight down the flume.
As I recall, the rocky grotto in the mid-ground was a sculpted bench, similar to those at Disneyland, where guests could wait while their family rode the Mine Train. Mom always waited there since she was scared of the dynamite sequence at the end of the ride.
There is a “real” bottle house in Calico, which may have inspired this one. I think there was another in Columbia in the Northern Mines. Recycled building materials were a thing in the Gold Rush West. The real-life ghost town of Rhyolite (near Death Valley) has many shanties whose metal roofs are flattened kerosene cans. Fortunately, rain resistance is not a big issue.
Near-postcard pic of the Log Flume, which uses only the finest narrow-gauge logs. The gigantic lantern to the left brings to mind Father Ted’s explanation of “Small versus Far Away”.
There are other, properly sized lanterns in the last pic, which looks like so much fun to be in. I wish Knotts did not close in the rain.
Thank you Major!
JG
Today I learned that Kodak 126 film cartridges were available loaded with slide film. I wish I had known this 60 years ago...
Thanks for the excellent views!
JB, those log vehicles have the face of The Beast on them! He is enticing all young people to listen to rock and roll. The Bottle House was a popular subject for photographers, but I don’t remember if I have any interior photos on GDB. If you go inside the house (which is now a shop), many bottles have little slips of paper with messages on them, presumably placed by guests over the decades. I assume the log was supposed to resemble one that had been hewn by an axe long ago?
DBenson, it seems amazing that bottles wouldn’t be reused and saved, but there’s a guy on YouTube (“Below the Plains”) who digs up pits (usually old outhouse pits, kind of yucky, but I guess after 100+ years it’s all OK) FULL of bottles of various kinds. I’ve only been on Radiator Springs Racers once, somehow I missed the bottle house in the queue. I’ll have to look for it the next time!
Melissa, I have to admit that I have wondered what it would be like to slide down that flume without a vehicle!
JG, yes, you can often see the sculpted benches in photos. I love that your mom was scared of the dynamite, it shows how her imagination really got caught up in the theme of the ride. I wasn’t sure if the bottle house at Calico was basically a new-ish creation (maybe built at the same time as the one at Knott’s) or if it was really old. My great-grandpappy built a house out of old hats! The large lantern attracted giant moths, which nobody thought about until it was too late.
Hogarth, I know what you mean, if only we all knew how much better slide film generally was (is?) for capturing good images back in those days! But I’m sure most people just wanted convenient photo prints that they could share.
Major and all,
So glad to see the lady in the first pic with the neato shades looking into the camera has her hairdo properly inflated to the required 30-32 psi.
Love old time Knotts.
W
Brings back memories when the folks and I would drive up to Knott's for the day, park for free, ride the cable car into the plaza and simply roam the grounds. The Log and Mine Train rides were a 'must-ride' and were Disney quality if not better considering nothing quite like it existed there. Note the ticket booth in the background at the Mine Train entrance. If my foggy memory is correct, I think the tickets were of souvenir quality and you could keep them. But I'm really stretching it on that one as if they existed, surely somebody would have posted one by now. Yep, sculpted bench seating which seemed quite clever at the time. KS
JB, those indentations kept the Salisbury steak out of the peach cobbler on the ride. The peas got into everything, as always.
Growing up in SoCal, Knott's was a go to place for weekend fun, because back then it was free to get in! Remember good eatin' at the Chicken Dinner Restaurant and in the Ghost Town, Miner's Stew with biscuits and their fabulous Boysenberry jam! Lots of fun times and fond memories.
Dean, Ha! Don't forget the mashed potatoes, they're never a problem; a solid flat slab. That is, until they heat up. Then everything gets into them.
The Knotts berry farm bottle house was based on the 1905 BottleHouse of the ghost town of rhyolite death Valley. This is where Walter Knotts got his idea for his Knotts ghost town bottle house. I don’t believe Columbia ever had an actual bottle house although it did have 3 breweries , glass bottles were a premium, and during Columbia‘s heyday would have been refilled from one of its three breweries. I think several bottle houses sprang up as tourist draws in the 1940s and 50s but I don’t actually think they were a common thing certainly not in the 19th century when glass bottles in the West were very rare. Walter Knott’s based his Knott’s Berry Farm Calico Ghost Town and Calico Ghost Town bottle house in San Yermo on the 1905 Rhyolite bottle house. Lots of 20th century roadside tourist attractions have become historicly blurred with the 19th Century West.
Tonopah, Nevada also had a 20th century bottle house and Tonopah is where Walter Knott’s saw the original Barrel House he recreated for his Knott’s Ghost Town.
Warren Nielsen, ha ha, that woman carries a ruler with her to be sure that her hair is at least seven inches above her scalp at all times!
KS, I don’t remember going to Knott’s when admission was free, though I assume that we did; our regular visits started at around 1970-ish, when we lived in Huntington Beach. Knott’s seemed so close! I think TokyoMagic! revealed that the little ticket booth was removed a few years ago, sadly. Maybe it was termite-ridden, I have no idea. Yes, I believe that tickets to the Mine Train are not rare, though I only have a few Knott’s tickets in my collections - the one I have been seeking is a Jungle Island ticket, never used!
Dean Finder, yes, peas everywhere; ditto the corn, which always got into the chocolate pudding.
John, I didn’t eat at the chicken restaurant until 2010, and it was good, but everyone swore that “it used to be better”. I do know I was a bit bummed that the boysenberry juice, which I remembered as intensely berry-flavored, seemed rather watery. But the chicken was good!
JB, I remember looking forward to TV dinners when I was a kid. I liked either the fried chicken or the salisbury steak!
Mike Cozart, I’m sure that in the 19th century, glass bottles (and most other supplies) were hard to come by, but by the late 19th century/early 20th century, they were discarded in great quantities. I’m always stunned at how many were thrown down into the privy holes (as seen in the YouTube channel, “Below the Plains”, as mentioned earlier). Everything from tiny medicine vials to whiskey, wine, and beer bottles. Early soda bottles are apparently very desirable.
I remember a brief era in the 70’s when glass bleach jugs were highly sought after as decor. We had two of the one-gallon size in the farm shed, and one smaller, maybe a quart? All dark amber glass. I used them for decoration for several years in college and just after, when that “rusty tool-farm implement” look was in vogue, since they were free. No idea what I did with them after.
Mike, the rhyolite bottle house must be the one I’m thinking of, not Columbia. We visited Columbia several times in the same era that we visited rhyolite and I must be conflating the two places after 60 years. I was pretty sure the calico version was a later production, but I saw that one again as an adult fairly recently, so it calibrated as a reproduction, the others, not so sure. The rhyolite metal roofs still had the painted labels on. I can’t find my photos of those, some of the last pics I took with film before digital took over.
JG
Anonymous,
There's a couple of Mine Train tickets in a scrapbook my wife (to be at the time) made for me from Feb or March 1970, and they are not what I would call souvenir quality at all. Printed thin paper, not real quality stuff. To me, valuable items indeed.
And I too remember parking the car (free) in the lot, riding the cable car (free) to the plaza and then wandering around (free) for hours. Dinner at the Steak House. That dark, almost black bread that was served before the meal, as an appetizer. Warm, soft, moist. yummy stuff.
Love old time Knotts.
W
A big memory for me of early Knott’s was the groups of chicken that roamed around the parking lot and the smell of the towering eucalyptus trees that provided shade to guests cars…. And the cable cars “clanging” S they stopped to pick up loads of guests and take them to the front entrance . There’s still some roaming chickens between Independence Hall and the entry tunnel from the current parking lot. I am not certain exactly when Knott’s started charging an admission fee … 1968? 1972?? But I know the model train shop serviced local model railroaders and modelers …. Even Bud Hurlbut purchased supplies there for his models …. But I bet the shop’s business must have been greatly impacted when the walls went up! I can remember going to Knott’s with my grandparents for chicken dinner and browsing around the shops - but I’m thinking it must have been the ones outside the gates.
JG, at the restaurant where I worked as a teenager, we got Frank's Red Hot Sauce in glass gallon jugs. Everybody who worked there had at least one for a change jar.
Mike Cozart, Knott's started charging admission in 1968. A letter was sent out to employees in March of '68, stating that the wall should be up sometime around June 1st of that same year.
KS, you are right, there was a souvenir ticket for the Calico Mine Ride (and other Knott's attractions). "Vintage Disneyland Tickets" had a post about 15 years ago, with some examples. Here is the link to that post. I don't know why his images are so incredibly large now, with his blog's "menu" superimposed on top of the images. It didn't used to be like that. But if you click on the individual images of the tickets, you can view them unobstructed. They will still be large, but you can use your side to side and up and down navigation to see them and you can still click on them and save copies for yourself:
https://vintagedisneylandtickets.blogspot.com/2008/04/knotts-berry-farm-calico-mine-co-mine.html
And yes, Major, you have a good memory. I did a post back in 2012, about the recent removal of the Calico Mine Train's original ticket booth:
https://meettheworldinprogressland.blogspot.com/2012/01/knotts-update-part-1-totally-eighties.html
Thanks folks for the memories that we had before the days of admission fees. And Warren..that reference to the dark bread that they served in the Steak House. I think we took all the unused bread home to enjoy. Totally forgot until you mentioned it. And don't get me started about Boysenberry. It seems as if Boysenberry has disappeared from store shelves and menus. It was my favorite berry of all. On my last trip to SoCal a few months ago, I looked high and low for it only to be told it just isn't available anymore except in very small quantities as a specialty item. And don't expect it to taste like you remember it from the Knott's label of old. Unthinkable!! Unacceptable!!! KS
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